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«I'm the Result of a Remix» | Norient.Com «I’m the Result of a Remix» | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 12:30:22 «I’m the Result of a Remix» INTERVIEW by Eric Mandel Hyped singer of the Arab world, co-founder of an early Lebanese indie band Soapkills and a role in a Jim Jarmusch movie. Yasmine Hamdan talks about her fascination for Asmahan Al-Atrash being the first female punk and Western misconceptions of the Arab worlds. Born 1976 in Beirut, Yasmine Hamdan grew up in Lebanon, Kuwait, Greece and the Arab Emirates. In postwar Beirut she co-founded Soapkills, a duo project with producer Zeid Hamdan which is said to be the first independent band in the country. She moved to France where she collaborated with producer Mirwais as floor friendly electronic YAS, before going solo in 2012 with the highly praised album Ya Nass. Since then Yasmine Hamdan has gained further recognition with an appearance in Jim Jarmusch’s vampire romance Only Lovers left Alive and has performed almost non-stop for three years while working on her second album called Al Jamilat. The title track («The Beautiful Ones») is an adaptation of a poem by Mahmoud Darwhish. In other songs she is switching between classical Arabic and local vernacular, her voice hovering over a refined, brooding and instrospective soundscape with lots of space, long atmospheric intros and beautiful instrumentation. Al Jamilat is released on Crammed Discs, the video to the single «La Ba’den» was directed by her husband, filmmaker Elia Suleiman. https://norient.com/index.php/stories/the-result-of-a-remix Page 1 of 7 «I’m the Result of a Remix» | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 12:30:22 [Eric Mandel]: Since Ya Nass, it seems you have been touring relentlessly, I guess we can be lucky that you managed to get an album done. [Yasmine Hamdan]: Actually it was kind of hard to find some solitude. As an artist you have to do a lot of representation, and this can be very draining. If you write an album you need solitude, a slower pace, something that is more contemplative. This time I wanted to be more central to everything, artistically I wanted to be more in the lead. A lot of the songs were born on a plane or in the train. I also tried different places like hotel rooms. It helps you a lot, because it allows you to take a bit of a distance and kind of feel the songs in different environments, like you start feeling the temperature of the songs in each place you are. [EM]: In terms of temperature the album feels very warm, intimate and subtle. Like a sanctuary in a crazy world. [YH]: I think music in general has always been a place to hide. A place that allows me to be more in touch with my spiritual self and where I am really being able to be in a different space, it's really about slowing down and spacing out. So when I'm working on songs I need to be dreaming, I need to feel something emotional and I need it to be very sensual. Imagine you need to have something that makes you feel better or ease your pain. All the artists I listen to have this spiritual dimension and this relation to time and space. I like silence in songs. [EM]: Lyrically you held on the Arabic language. Wouldn’t it be easier for you to sing in French or English for the international market? [YH]: Arabic is my emotional language, in which I feel I can really bring something new. A lot of people have done so many things in English, I cannot compete with them. I learned five languages. I always felt that they give you the freedom to think in different ways. There are many words in English that do not exist in Arabic, and the other way around. But language has always been something very universal. I started singing in English without understanding one word. I fell in love with a lot of artists that I do not understand, and do not care to understand what they are talking about a as long as there is an emotion that passes and talks to myself. If you let your mind think and you don't let your body and your senses let go, you cannot space out with the music and be in another, kind of chemical relationship [with it]. So I am really more with the chemical relationship. Surfing Between the Dialects [EM]: You sort of carved your way into the Arabic musical language. You had to find a way to adopt the singing traditions for your needs and purposes. Does this give you more room for experimentation? https://norient.com/index.php/stories/the-result-of-a-remix Page 2 of 7 «I’m the Result of a Remix» | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 12:30:22 [YH]: Of course. I know a lot of dialects, as I lived in many different Arabic countries. Each dialect has a different sense, musicality and way of grooving. I like to surf between these dialects – to sing a song in Egyptian, then in classical Arabic, and then in Lebanese, and then turn to Kuwaiti or Iraqi or Palestinian. All of them can sound differently, and that gives me a lot of possibilities with the melodies. Because they don't always work with the words. It's very difficult to find the right balance. [EM]: So you can paint a more detailed picture with subtle means, which for Western ears makes not much of a difference. Do you sometimes have the feeling that you are talking to two audiences? One that can feel the music, and see you and be convinced by the overall appearance and one that can actually dig the poetry? [YH]: My songs have not always been accessible for Arab speaking people all the time. Not everybody is comfortable with, or used to the Kuwaiti dialect. I do a lot of references in my texts to things that are very local, or that come from my childhood, my past, cultural things we all share. Many of us grew up with Egyptian cinema and music, on things that, at some point, nourished a whole generation of Arabs. So I like to have this past in the presence of my songs. It gives me somehow more freedom to sing in front of a public that gets the melodies, the presence and the music in a different, more abstract way. And I think, from these two places, people meet. There is no border between one audience and the other. Because somehow there is something they can share. It's the same thing in art. We share some love for the same thing, but for different reasons. [EM]: Here’s an example: I read what sparked your work was a song by Asmahan Al-Atrash. [YH]: It was many things, but on an abstract level, she opened the door for me. She was this incredible Syrian singer who died at the age of 33, very beautiful and with this incredible voice. In her songs there are a lot of different influences and sonorities from different worlds: The Arabic world, but then there is also a piano and very edgy and modern things in there. Also, she mixed opera and Arabic music in the most elegant way. She was a Syrian princess, got married and divorced three times with the same prince. Everybody thinks that she was a double agent, and there are very weird stories around her. But aside from her being very mysterious, I really felt the fragility and melancholy behind this powerful voice. I fell in love with her instantly – also because my grandaunt, who was like my grandmother, used to sing me her songs, and I hadn't heard them [from anybody else]. So this was the first time I heard this song with her voice. My heart (sighs) ... I was very happy. [EM]: Asmahan was a very modern, a woman ahead of her time, in a way, compared by some with Marlene Dietrich. https://norient.com/index.php/stories/the-result-of-a-remix Page 3 of 7 «I’m the Result of a Remix» | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 12:30:22 [YH]: Completely. She was not very lucky to have been born in this environment, because she always had to somehow please a lot of people, I think. It's not easy being a princess and a singer I guess [laughs]. [EM]: What song was it, by the way? [YH]:It’s called «Ya Habibi Ta’ala», written by her brother Farid Al-Atrash, and it is said that it is based on a Mexican song, which you can hear when you sing the melody. [EM]: That figures, it has a sort of bolero or habanera feeling to it. But you never recorded it? [YH]: I did actually, with Soapkills. This was the first song I recorded in Arabic. I had a 4-track and I produced a lot of crazy demos [laughs]. But we never really released it. You know with Soapkills nothing was really official, because it was so underground. We didn't really care, and the times were different. I don't even have pictures of Soapkills. I am happy that Zeid exists, because he is the one who kept a little bit [laughs]. I was more into that idea of doing things in the moment, you know. We did a lot of songs, but we did not record them all, and if we recorded we might have recorded at a party or a concert, but badly.
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